Mental Exercises Can Reduce Kids’ Potential For Trouble
Benedict Carey
After inflicting months of sleep deprivation on their parents, young children often switch course and begin what could be called a thought-deprivation campaign.
This is the stage, around age 2 or 3, when their brains seem to send multiple messages to the body at once — eat, scream, spill juice, throw crayons — and good luck to anyone trying to form a complete sentence or thought in their presence. Toddlers are interruption machines, all impulse and little control.
One reason is that an area of the brain that is critical to inhibiting urges, the prefrontal cortex, is still a work in progress. The density of neural connections in the 2-year-old prefrontal cortex, for instance, is far higher than in adults, and levels of neurotransmitters, the mind’s chemical messengers, are lower. Some children’s brains adapt quickly, while others’ take time — and, as a result, classmates, friends and adults are interrupted for years along the way.
But just as biology shapes behaviour, so behaviour can accelerate biology. And a small group of educational and cognitive scientists now say that mental exercises of a certain kind can teach children to become more self-possessed at earlier ages, reducing stress levels at home and improving their experience in school. Researchers can test this ability, which they call executive function, and they say it is more strongly associated with school success than IQ.
“We know that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the 20s, and some people will ask, ‘Why are you trying to improve prefrontal abilities when the biological substrate is not there yet?’” said Adele Diamond, a professor of developmental cognitive science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “I tell them that 2-year-olds have legs, too, which will not reach full length for 10 years or more — but they can still walk and run and benefit from exercise.” Executive function involves three important skills. The first is the ability to resist distractions or delay gratification to finish a job: to finish the book report before turning on the television. The second is working memory, the capacity to hold multiple numbers or ideas in the mind, — for example, to do simple addition or subtraction without pencil and paper. The third is cognitive flexibility, the presence of mind to adapt when demands change — when recess is cancelled, say, and there’s a pop quiz in math. Experts can rate these abilities by giving young children several straightforward mental tests.
Experts say that parents can use a variety of activities to help children sharpen executive skills. Some of these are obvious: reading to a child while continually establishing eye contact. By tilting the book so pictures are obscured, parents force youngsters to follow the words carefully, holding more of them in mind at one time — a function of working memory. NYT NEWS SERVICE
This is the stage, around age 2 or 3, when their brains seem to send multiple messages to the body at once — eat, scream, spill juice, throw crayons — and good luck to anyone trying to form a complete sentence or thought in their presence. Toddlers are interruption machines, all impulse and little control.
One reason is that an area of the brain that is critical to inhibiting urges, the prefrontal cortex, is still a work in progress. The density of neural connections in the 2-year-old prefrontal cortex, for instance, is far higher than in adults, and levels of neurotransmitters, the mind’s chemical messengers, are lower. Some children’s brains adapt quickly, while others’ take time — and, as a result, classmates, friends and adults are interrupted for years along the way.
But just as biology shapes behaviour, so behaviour can accelerate biology. And a small group of educational and cognitive scientists now say that mental exercises of a certain kind can teach children to become more self-possessed at earlier ages, reducing stress levels at home and improving their experience in school. Researchers can test this ability, which they call executive function, and they say it is more strongly associated with school success than IQ.
“We know that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the 20s, and some people will ask, ‘Why are you trying to improve prefrontal abilities when the biological substrate is not there yet?’” said Adele Diamond, a professor of developmental cognitive science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “I tell them that 2-year-olds have legs, too, which will not reach full length for 10 years or more — but they can still walk and run and benefit from exercise.” Executive function involves three important skills. The first is the ability to resist distractions or delay gratification to finish a job: to finish the book report before turning on the television. The second is working memory, the capacity to hold multiple numbers or ideas in the mind, — for example, to do simple addition or subtraction without pencil and paper. The third is cognitive flexibility, the presence of mind to adapt when demands change — when recess is cancelled, say, and there’s a pop quiz in math. Experts can rate these abilities by giving young children several straightforward mental tests.
Experts say that parents can use a variety of activities to help children sharpen executive skills. Some of these are obvious: reading to a child while continually establishing eye contact. By tilting the book so pictures are obscured, parents force youngsters to follow the words carefully, holding more of them in mind at one time — a function of working memory. NYT NEWS SERVICE
SELF-CONTROL: Young boys take turns listening and speaking without interrupting each other. Such exercises can help children become more self-possessed at an early age
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